I really don’t know what the scene was with breakfast. Something in the back of my mind says that we scheduled it for 10:30–too early for me, but probably too late for everybody else. When I finally got up, Daniel and Patricia were there, already on the couch watching Brazilian music videos. Pettus was downstairs making use of our pool–the only one of us who did, but I don’t think she ever got in. That unused feature of the house doesn’t amortize well.

I must say, that’s a very unenthusiastic expression. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that she wasn’t thrilled about me taking her picture. I don’t know what she was worried about. She always looks good. I, on the other hand, felt like I had been electrocuted the night before, then put in wet cement to sleep. People like me, we’re the photographers.

Daniel and Patricia got to experience the full impact of our breakfast, and were suitably impressed. I’m sure they told us about their flight over to Rio, but I was in La-La Land at the time. They could have been recounting a mugging or an airport luggage SNAFU; it didn’t matter. I responded with “That’s nice” to everything they told us, as my eyes glazed over the chocolate cake, morphing it into one of the African hotties in the Vila Isabel parade.

We didn’t want to waste any daylight, and Rio wasn’t getting any smaller, so Jean began the process of booking Marcelo for the day. It still would have been easier to call him directly, but we had to do everything through Sylvia, which added time to everything.

When Marcelo arrived, we all trudged out to the car. Well, not trudged, just didn’t have all that much spring in our step. Even Pettus. We didn’t have any set plan for the day, which is almost a detriment in a case like this. All I knew was that I had told Flávia we’d see them in Santa Teresa the next day. Marcelo asked what we wanted to do. “Let’s go to Santa Teresa,” I suggested. “We met a girl last night who said they were going to play there today.”

“Santa Teresa,” Marcelo replied. “Ees very nice.” He immediately took off, not forgetting the thumbs up to the guard.

On the way over the bridge, we marveled at all the cranes. I had noticed the day before how many there were that had been bent in half from a fatal load, appearing to be in the relaxed position until you saw the steel crumpled at the joint, the arm pointing straight down. They stood in the bay like poor old men in a nursing home.

Marcelo pointed out into the water and said, “That one is mine. I’ll sell it to you.” The whole off-the-wallness of the remark demanded more from me.

I indicated one of the bent ones and said, “Is that it? Good quality steel. Can’t you just see the advertising guys trying to come up with an ad campaign? Well, sir, we find that Butter Soft isn’t working for us as a tagline.”

Then from the back, in the desert dry voice, Robo chimed in, “I can’t believe it’s not metal! ” while giving a slight shake of the head and an emphatic half smile, like he’d just thought of a good idea–the same way he delivers all his devastating bon mots. The same way he nearly got us mobbed at Carnaval the night before with the “I’ve seen better” comment. He never fails to get a hearty laugh out of me, but this time, the remark went straight for my humor G spot.

Once in a blue moon, due to unknown sets of circumstances, somebody can sneak in the back door of hilarity with something that will completely take me out of body and send me into paroxysms of violent tear-inducing laughter that won’t quit for several minutes. And then, like a mosquito bite, the image of the remark will pop back into my head and start me over again. It’s something that has to gradually subside, or wear itself out. I can’t stop it like the hiccups, and it always leaves me weak and feeling like I’ve just done 50 situps in two minutes. All that said, there is absolutely no other feeling like it in the world.

Of course this made Robo laugh, not boisterously, but more like an intermittent idling motor, which would make me laugh more. Marcelo just stared at us in bemusement and amusement. He had some really complex expressions in his bag.

Once we got into Rio, Marcelo showed us the ancient Carioca aqueduct, which I snapped through the windshield. It was built in the mid 1700s to bring water to Rio from the Carioca River. In the late 1800s, after the Carioca began to fail to deliver enough, other methods of getting water were used, and the aqueduct was converted into a bridge for the tram running up to Santa Teresa. The aqueduct also spanned the site of the Passeío Publico, built in the late 1700s over a lagoon that was landfilled to not only extend Rio’s real estate, but also to get rid of trash and mosquito breeding ground. Marcelo had shown us part of the excavation the day before. You see how there are two levels to this thing. It was beautiful and cool as dirt!

Ain’t nothing like a little graffiti on a mid-18th-century historic treasure is there? Sigh.

The streets were thick with people in various pockets all throughout Rio, even before we got to Santa Teresa. I could see what Marcelo meant about “They’d rather be having fun.”

Or making pretty pictures.